We are about the midpoint of Black History Month during this 2024 leap year

Feb 16, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Some 62 years ago, on February 16, infamously labelled ‘black Friday’, a budget riot was unleashed in British Guiana. This repulsive event was triggered by a national budget crafted on the advice of Nicholas Kaldor, an accomplished and internationally respected economist and who was invited to do so by Dr.Cheddi Berret Jagan (CBJ), then Premier and leader of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP), the governing party . The Finance Minister at the time was Dr. Charles Ramkissoon Jacobs. CBJ felt that multinational corporations and the planter class were co-conspirators in anodious scheme that facilitated capital flight. The government also concluded that the tax structure was skewed in favourthe wealthy. Because of the CBJ’s unwavering  support to Communism (Dr. Vishnu Bisram recently spelt this out in a newspaper letter published on February 9), and President Kennedy’s hard line commitment  that there must never be another ‘Cuba’ in America’s backyard, loans and other financial support to British Guiana were resolutely blocked.

CBJ therefore turned to Dr. Kaldor who had worked with the United Kingdom Tax Commission and also had advised governments in India and Ghana among others, to recommend measures to fund the country’s capital expenditure. The 1962 budget proposals included a fiscal regimen covering: Income tax assessment for commercial businesses, increase import duty on certain goods, a compulsory savings scheme linked to redeemable government bonds, increase in taxes on certain foods which could be adequately substituted locally. Of note, there was no salary increase announced for civil service workers.

Opposition parties, the Peoples National Congress (PNC) and the United Force (UF) led respectively by Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham (LFSB), and Peter Stanislaus D’Aguiar (PSD), were engaged in an aggressive campaign against the Kaldor / Jacobs budget. LFSB main focus was to ‘Axe the Tax’. They were openly and directly supported by some sections of organise labour and the private media; andwere also backed by anti-communist powerful states and their institutions, led by the United States. The 1962 budget was widely viewed as a measure to entrench communismand alsotouted as an attack on the downtrodden. It propelleda pledge by the business class and their political leader to oppose, expose and depose. Ironically, that said budget was applauded by the New York Times and the London Times but by the time those publications had hit the stands, it was too late to abandon the chain of events which were designedto destabilise BG. The genie was already out the bottle.It is alleged that in response to an appeal for consideration of a wage increase, CBJ said not a penny more or something to the effect. I have not found anything to substantiate this utterance and am therefore asking if anyone knows this for a fact to inform yours truly accordingly.

Ralph Seeram in his piece “From the diaspora…Kaldor Budget and Black Friday February 16, 1962, published in one of the dailies on March 30, 2014 quoted from the Wynn Parry commission report to portray LFSB as the leading (perhaps only) protagonist that whipped anti budget and anti Jagan supporters into a feeding frenzy to satisfy an induced thirst for demonstrations and disorder.  The mayhem of black Friday was followedby several months of riots and killings involving mainly Africans and Indians. I was told by an eyewitness that a major public event which help set the stagefor the first wave of riots on February 16, 1962 started immediately after a group comprising mainly non-Indians and non-Africanswas emotionally addressed by PAD from the balcony of the Ice House opposite Stabroek Market,.  He then came out to Water Street and led a procession with vociferous chants of “Jack go back” (reference to CBJ advisor, Jack Kelshall). The gathering stopped at several business places including Bettencourt and Fogarty where managers and employees closed theirbusiness and joined the demonstration which followed a route to Parade Ground. They stoppedon Carmichael Street and called out to LFSB from his office to join the procession. He came outside, was photographed with PAD and got back inside. Hesubsequently went to the ground and addressed the meeting.

Editor, in the aftermath of the 2024 national budget, there is currently a strike by teachers in all the administrative regions of Guyana for what they describe as aliving salary to adequately make ends meet in this world’s fastest growing economy. There seems to be a hardening of positions on both sides. Space will not permit me to analyse and compare the contextual underpinning of today’s post budget industrial relations reaction etc.to  that of 62 years ago. However, permit to make one brief observation. A neighbouring nationis making a serious play for a large chunk of Guyana and her natural resources. In the world of geopolitics, there are more questions than answers in real time.

Somehow, I am driven to recall and reflect on the contents of a book to which I was introduced in 1987. The author, Barbara W Tuchman,outlined indetail four decisive turning points in history which illustrate the very heights of recklessness: The Trojan war, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain’s King George 111, and the United States persistent mistakes in Vietnam. The publication is appropriately titled ‘The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam’

It wasGeorge Santayana who stated “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

Yours faithfully
Derrick Cummings

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• Dr. Charles Ramkissoon, Dr. Vishnu Bisram, Dr.Cheddi Berret Jagan, People's National Congress, Stanislaus D’Aguiar

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